Why does the provider name for vmware keep changing?

[Ross Smith]

Forgive me if this has already been asked and answered, but no relevant hits turned up.

When I type

vagrant box add name name.box  --provider vmware

adding a Packer built box, I get:

The box you attempted to add doesn't match the provider you specified.

Provider expected: vmware

Provider of box: vmware_desktop

Question:why force the user to wait a minute to find out the provider is invalid (I know the name is in metadata.json, but isn't the known list pretty small, and could be hard-coded?)

Question: why is it 'vmware_desktop' anyway, when the docs state otherwise (see below).

Question: vmware_desktop, as opposed to what other type of vmware provider? vSphere? Couldn't the desktop plugin simply be called 'vmware'?

So then I type:

vagrant box add name name.box  --provider vmware_desktop

which dpesn't complain, but then, when I type:

vagrant up --provider=vmware_desktop

I get

The provider 'vmware_desktop' could not be found, but was requested to

back the machine 'name'. Please use a provider that exists.

Question:why force the user to wait a minute to find out the provider is invalid?

Question:why not allow the provider name I just used to continue to work?

So then I visit the docs at

http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/vmware/usage.html

and find the provdier is named vmware_workstation. So I type:

vagrant up --provider=vmware_workstation

which brings the box up.

Question: can't this be simplified?

http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/vmware/usage.html states

"At some point in the future, the providers will probably be merged into a single `vagrant-vmware` plugin. For now, the Workstation and Fusion codebases are different enough that they are separate plugins."

This is a great goal, but couldn't this happen *now* from the user's perspective, and if the user type 'vmware' on Windows or Linux, vagrant knows they mean 'vmware_workstation', and if they type 'vmware' on OSX, vagrant knows they mean 'vmware_fusion'?

[Mitchell Hashimoto]

Ross,

Yes, I want to simplify this a great deal more. It isn't a top priority right now but its definnitely up there as it is a constant state of confusion for new users.

Best,

Mitchell

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[Bert Corderman]

thanks Ross for you detailed post.  I ran into the same issue and was able to resolve after reviewing your post.

Bert

[Jeff Geerling]

Another +1... Scratching my head for 20 minutes, a bunch of Googling finally brought me here, and after trying vmware_desktop, vmware_workstation, plain vmware, and finally vmware_fusion (I'm on a Mac), I was able to bring up my box. This was after updating to Vagrant 1.7.4 and reinstalling the VMware plugin.

Note that the error message told me the 'provider of the box' was "vmware_desktop"—that was what threw me initially.

-Jeff Geerling